Panto_Villan

You were one of the people I was referring to, yes, but it was mostly because you seemed more willing to accept the Hamas propaganda line on the hospital attack over the evidence in the photos etc. I’m glad to see you condemn Hamas though, and I do agree with some of the other things you’re saying. I agree it’s a war crime to shut off water and food to a civilian population and Western governments should be calling that out. Personally, I also think the West should demand a greater commitment to the peace process from Israel in exchange for backing them in this war against Hamas, rather than this just being “blank cheque” backing. But I don’t think Israel are going to accept Hamas returning 200 hostages in exchange for calling it quits when 1,400 Israelis were massacred, unfortunately (maybe if the numbers were the other way around it might have worked).

It’s actually worse than not being interested in making a deal with the Palestinians, though - Netanyahu has deliberately been doing what he can to delegitimise the PA in favour of Hamas, because that way they can claim they’ve got no acceptable negotiating partner for peace while they continue to settle occupied land (the theory was Hamas would be content with control of Gaza). I hope that after this conflict is done that a more moderate Israeli government takes power that is more willing to take on the settler lobby in Israeli politics. But yes, I agree with your point about the Arab governments. It’s quite telling how the neighbouring Arab states haven’t been willing to take in any refugees at all.

Although I think they have a right to defend themselves, I’m broadly anti-Israel because I see them as having deliberately sabotaged the peace process over the last two decades so they can settle more occupied land. Until that changes, the violence is going to continue. But this thread really does make it obvious that for some people Israel will always be at fault, no matter the situation or what the evidence says.

As far as I’m aware, the tweet you’re talking about came from an Israeli who had once worked with Netanyahu but no longer has any links with the government and is just a random Twitter “influencer” looking for clicks. It’s hardly a smoking gun, especially when compared to literal photos posted by Hamas that show the damage looked nothing like an Israeli bomb (and only affected the car park). Even the claim of 500 dead seems to have come directly from a Hamas-controlled ministry.

While I broadly agree with the point you’re making, the Israelis are being less discriminate than normal at the moment. They’re not bothering with the “roof knocking” at the moment, for example. There’s a lot of talk from military analysts that the sheer number of bombs they’re dropping means they’re just hitting any target building ever connected to Hamas without much care for recency, too. Etc. They’re not aiming to kill civilians right now but I don’t think they’re hugely bothered about them being collateral damage.

Dunno, looks an awful lot like momo is.

There’s almost no difference between the scenario I initially outlined and the question “what would be the reaction if Israel did what Hamas was accused of when they go into Gaza?” In both cases it’d be the IDF doing it, in both cases in Gaza, and in both cases I’m interested in what response the people in this thread would have. I embellished things slightly by making it a public beheading rather than it occurring in the homes of the babies concerned (which I shouldn’t have done) but I really don’t see how that suddenly transforms the whole situation into a ridiculous straw man argument. No, I’ve never accused people of saying beheading babies is fine. I’ve accused them of not caring about different reasons and circumstances around the deaths, and drawing false equivalence between them (ie. saying it doesn’t matter if beheading happened as opposed to shooting, as the outcome is the same). We care about the way people died and the reasons behind it when looking at a murder case outside of a warzone, and the same applies in wartime too. For example there’s a clear difference to me between Hamas deliberately beheading a baby and a baby being killed by an Israeli bomb. In that second instance, you can draw further distinction between whether the baby dies because Israel fired a huge bomb at a civilian area that may or may not contain militants, or whether a Hamas team firing rockets into Israel were deliberately using the baby as a human shield. Anyone who considers those three scenarios and says “I’m equally horrified about a baby dying either way” is just carrying water for terrorists as far as I’m concerned (as well as indirectly justifying any war crimes by the IDF). To answer to your question about premeditated murder A or B being worse - yeah, obviously which is worse depends on the context and circumstances, and I’m curious why this apparently applies everywhere except in this conflict. As for the ethics points, no, I’m not confused between “morally” and “legally”. The reason why the legal distinctions between different kinds of killing exist is because they reflect generally-held human moral / ethical views on the topic. If that idea bothers you just replace any use of the word “morally” with “legally” and the point is generally the same. Anyway, I think I’m done discussing the topic. I’d like to think most of the people I’m referring to don’t actually think that way and were just using loose language, and my initial post was just an attempt to point that out.

There's a credible allegation that Hamas beheaded babies - it's been corroborated by some of the non-IDF volunteer organisations on the scene, and repeated by the President of the USA. Clearly it may well still prove to be untrue, but equally there's also a real possibility that it actually happened. The discussions taking place were about what the ramifications of that would be if it had occurred, not necessarily saying it has. However several people were claiming that beheading was no worse than bombing, or just blandly saying that killing is wrong no matter which side does it. I can quote them if you want but you can read them on pages 106-107. The question I asked was "what would the reaction be if Israeli soldiers did this instead of Hamas?" and I really don't see how that's an extreme hypothetical scenario unless you just think Israel is far more morally pure than Hamas is. You'd be utterly outraged if Israeli troops went into Palestinian houses and beheaded babies when they move into Gaza, right? I would be. Because although I appreciate the ultimate outcome is the same, it's a more barbaric act than indirectly killing the same baby by switching off the power to Gaza or by them dropping a bomb on a Hamas team firing rockets into Israel from the building next door (although switching the power off to Gaza is itself a war crime). As you say yourself, the principle of some deaths being worse than others is an established part of our law and ethics system. It's worse to brutally and deliberately kill someone than it is to lose control of your car and kill a pedestrian. It's similarly a big part of the laws of war - e.g. it's morally acceptable to shoot an enemy soldier, but not to shoot that same enemy soldier if they are unarmed and have surrendered. The same applies to the scenarios outlined above. Deliberately torturing and murdering civilians is worse than them ending up dead as part of a legitimate military engagement of enemy forces, and so on. I don't think you need to have a complete set of moral equations in front of you to accept that.

What’s the strawman here? The accusation is that Hamas have beheaded babies. It’s still unclear whether that’s true or not, but people are already saying “they’re dead either way, what does it matter? Killing people is bad whoever does it” as if it doesn’t matter either way whether it actually happened. The intent and level of barbarism involved in a killing does matter, and if it comes out that Hamas have actually done this then I think it does affect the moral calculus of the situation. You can see from my other posts I’m no supporter of Israel. Just think it’s a bit distasteful people are so keen to gloss over Hamas sawing babies heads off (assuming it actually happened).

Nah, that’s not true. Intent and the level of cruelty matters when you’re talking about a killing, even if the ultimate outcome is the same for the dead person. You can rightly point out that babies have almost certainly died in Israel’s retaliatory strikes but let’s face it - if the IDF rounded up a bunch of children and publicly beheaded them, people wouldn’t be saying “it’s just the same as them being killed in an airstrike.” It would be considered much worse.

I can’t imagine a one-state solution is a good idea when the ethnic groups involved have this much bad blood. Countries have fought bloody civil wars and broken apart for far less. Israel should force their settlers off the occupied West Bank and continue with the previously planned two state solution imo. Maybe if the Israelis turn against the hard right parties currently in charge they might recognise the settler movement is more trouble than it’s worth. (Clearly that is very unlikely to happen.)

Hmmm. I think Arab support for the Palestinians is more important than you give it credit for, but you’re probably right it’s not the pivotal issue. That said I think the pivotal issue is specifically US military aid and military support, rather than the West as a whole. Europe has been complaining at Israel from the sidelines for a while now but Israel clearly feels able to entirely ignore them. But if America pulled its backing of Israel I’m sure they’d change course pretty quickly. I suppose you’re right that this attack will probably shore up support for Israel among Democrats, who have recently soured on Israel a lot (assuming Israel doesn’t commit too many war crimes in Gaza). But while that’s important, I still wouldn’t say it changes the overall situation too much, as it just means America will keep doing what they’ve been doing for decades already.

Have they actually, though? A week ago the Palestinian cause was dead. Israel wasn’t even pretending to care about the peace process / Palestinian rights any more, and the other Arab states were essentially legitimising that state of affairs by recognising Israel. If nothing changed, in 10-20 years the Gaza Strip is still an open air prison and the West Bank has been fully settled by Israelis. You’re right that the optics of this massacre are absolutely terrible for the Palestinian cause, but their chance of a worthwhile peace deal was already zero. But now even if Israel reacts relatively proportionally the Arab rulers are going to find it a lot harder to conveniently forget about the Palestinians and establish friendly diplomatic ties with Israel, no matter how much they might want to. And in the medium term, Israel might reconsider constantly turning the screws on the Palestinians without also having a plausible path to peace on the table. Also, there’s a real risk here Israel goes way too hard into Gaza and intentionally or accidentally commits major atrocities of their own. The situation gets way more unpredictable if that happens. It might even end up boosting the Palestinian cause more than anything else in living memory. (Not sure how much consolation that’s going to be to the thousands of Palestinians who are going to die in Israeli retaliation over the next few weeks, though.)

I’m not sure blaming the events entirely on Israel is adding more nuance than blaming them purely on the Palestinians, tbh. There’s putting things in context, and there’s whitewashing atrocities. Doing the latter (in defence of a designated terrorrist group, no less) is a pretty bold move for someone who wants to keep their scholarship.

I think up until the Camp David peace process went off the rails, being a full-throated supporter of Israel was perfectly defensible imo. Mark Hamill is 72 now. If he spent the first 50 years of his life seeing Israel as the good guys it can be hard to change that view, even when more recent events mean you probably should.

I think this makes us better than Man City! Gutted we didn’t win it at the end, we came agonisingly close a couple of times. But a draw was probably a fair result overall.

Every player is more expensive if you’re trying to compete at the level we now are, and every player is a roll of the dice. The successes (of which we have plenty) are more expensive and so are the duds. That’s just the way it is. But it’s a bit silly to compare Tielemans to Nakamba, who we had to send out on loan to the Championship when we wanted rid.

Trump doesn’t base his foreign policy on logic though. He could do literally anything once he took power, and there’s a fair chance he’d give Putin everything he asked for just to poke the democrats in the eye imo. It’s certainly Putin’s best hope of getting a good result out of the war. Ukraine is already turning into a political wedge issue in various places and with the counteroffensive going nowhere fast he’s probably feeling happier about the way the war is going than any time in the past. There’s also some quite troubling reports that Russia is finally sorting out their problems with the productions of FPV kamikaze drones, and training for their mobilised soldiers. And the west isn’t ramping artillery shell production as fast as we should be, so Russia may have the upper hand on that front next year too. It’s frustrating because a politically united West prepared to devote a relatively small amount of our defence spending to munitions production should be able to make this war a formality for the Ukrainians. But obviously that’s not what’s actually happening.

I predict he’ll get a big Saudi move, and after a couple of months in a country with no alcohol he’ll immediately win the Ballon D’Or.

We can, but you also need to recognise Israel is a democracy and the increasingly nationalist government has been repeatedly re-elected by those civilians over the last couple of decades. These policies weren’t enacted in a vacuum. I’d have even less sympathy if the civilians involved were settlers, but I don’t think that’s the case here? The settler areas are over the other side of Israel, near the West Bank rather than the Gaza Strip, right?

Also I’m a little surprised by the number of people sharing Visegrad content like they’re a reputable news source.

What’s going on in Israel is horrible, but I’m not sure I feel any more sympathy for the Israeli civilians than the ones in Gaza who are about to be killed in the Israeli retaliation. The modern incarnation of Israel isn’t a plucky new state desperately trying to survive against multiple neighbouring Arab states trying to exterminate them. They’re the largest military power in the region operating a religiously nationalist apartheid state, while deliberately colonising most of the disputed land and making no attempt at a peace process. Feels like they’re barely even a western ally any more either. I’m not sure what the solution is, but there does need to be recognition that expecting the Palestinians to remain peaceful is just asking them to quietly consent to being erased from the disputed areas. Israel has been continually pushing forward the status quo to benefit themselves in any recent times of peace.

Hype train cancelled.

I think it’s easy to forget just how famous the Spice Girls were in that era. She was the bigger celebrity than him when they got together imo, or on an equal footing at the very least. Not to argue with any of the points you’re making, but I don’t think you can claim she was only famous because she married Beckham (although their wealth probably does mostly comes from him).

Brilliant news, really happy he’s signed. Both for him and for us. I’m also very happy we’re in a position where it’s very rare for us to lose our best players. Things have changed a lot since NSWE took over!